At Length with Steve Scher
At Length with Jill Cornell Tarter
Prior to her Graduate School Public Lecture, SETI: Past, Present and Future — Finding Aliens and Finding Ourselves, Jill Cornell Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the SETI Institute, sat down for a conversation with At Length host Steve Scher, ’87.
Recorded on March 3, 2015
Poster from the lecture, SETI: Past, Present and Future — Finding Aliens and Finding Ourselves. Click to enlarge.
Dr. Jill Cornell Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at the SETI Institute, believes finding extraterrestrial intelligence is not a question of “if,” but of “when.” She served as project scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide, making her a fitting consult — and inspiration, it’s been said — for the major motion picture, Contact.
In this conversation with Steve Scher, Dr. Cornell Tarter talks about the struggle in bridging public imagination and public funding, how SETI is “archaeology of the future,” and why we need to stop expecting to find extraterrestrial intelligent life on dry land.
